For anyone active in academic two-person debate, I’ve generated a new version of the popular backfile dump of all arguments and evidence on the site. With over 160 arguments in this update, the backfile checks in at a ridiculous 510 pages so printing it out isn’t an option. I’m working on a new print option for individual argument pages but will keep updating this file more regularly.
Catching up to the last several years of web innovation, I’ve enabled ‘media’ clips as evidence in the citation and quote database. I’ve added two examples already to test this out (click on the ‘1 Reference’ link in either one):
Gore, Al. “Remarks at Wirefly X Prize Executive Summit.” Popular Science October 20, 2006. [ 1 reference ]
Tkacik, John J. and John Pike. “Situation Room: January 19, 2007.” CNN
January 19, 2007 - 19:00 ET. [ 1 reference ]
I like the idea of using a video clip to further one’s argument, it opens up the possibility of using other forms of media including images and podcasts. I’m still working on how this will integrate with the rest of the resources (not sure if this should be cluttering up the bibliography page) and will probably setup a special ‘media room’ for media enabled resources.
I also did not start working on this with the space weapons topic in mind, this was one of the ideas I’ve been working on to prepare the system for new and bigger topics (ex. my target topics, Global Warming and Iran). I was pleasantly surprised while searching for test material at the number of videos currently up on youtube related to space weapons and will work on integrating the best of these. Anyone that would like to help sift through these for key interviews or quotes, let me know.
User submitted edits are starting to trickle in which means I’m discovering a whole new set of bugs to fix and improvements to make. I’ll continue to work on the backend to make this process easier but any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I can already tell that I will be lifting the ‘approval‘ requirement sooner than I intially expected. In the meantime, here are a few new update widgets for tracking edits and comments:
I’ll setup RSS feeds for these new widgets shortly.